Davis R. Dewey papers

The Davis R. Dewey papers document Dewey's personal and professional life. The papers date from 1883 to 1913, the period of his early career as an academic economist. Most of the collection consists of correspondence with Dewey's family; with members of the St. Botolph Club; and with the Alumni Association of the University of Vermont. Of most interest is Dewey's voluminous professional correspondence concerning the affairs of the economics profession, correspondence and clippings documenting two early cases of academic freedom at leading American universities, and correspondence concerning the creation of the 12th US Census. The collection also includes family papers, correspondence concerning Dewey's membership in several voluntary associations, and class notes he took while an undergraduate student at the University of Vermont and a graduate student in economics at Johns Hopkins University.

The documentation is not comprehensive. The papers contain nothing on Dewey's work as a labor commissioner and consultant for the Federal government concerning the railway industry. A brief exchange of correspondence between Dewey and Terence V. Powderly is in the collection. Powderly was at one point head of the Knights of Labor, but is represented here as a Federal commissioner of immigration. There is very sparse coverage of the affairs of the MIT Economics Department which Dewey served for forty years as chair. Records of many of the publications Dewey authored during the period covered by the collection are also missing.

Dewey's academic life is not well documented. Teaching materials in the collection consist of a notebook of course notes from Hyde Park High School and two bound volumes of MIT course materials from 1893. Two early cases concerning academic freedom were evidently of interest to Dewey; the collection contains numerous clippings and some correspondence concerning the resignation of Brown University's President Andrews (1897) and the dismissal of an economics professor, Dr. A. Ross, from Stanford University over Ross' advocacy of free silver monetization (1900 to 1901). The only other academic affairs represented are records of Dewey's negotiations for employment by two universities in 1904 and 1905.

The papers include extensive records of Dewey's membership and participation in the early life of the American Economic Association (AEA), 1895 to 1908, and records of consulting work for various Federal and State agencies. By far the most complete sequence of correspondence in the collection concerns Dewey's almost single-handed organizing of the AEA's 1908 annual meeting. Included are substantive letters from some of the economics profession's best known names — John R. Commons, Richard T. Ely, Edwin R. A. Seligman, to name but a few. Also included is internal correspondence between members of the AEA's Publications Committee, as well as correspondence with contributors to the AEA's journal, the American Economic Review, and with members of the AEA's Executive Committee. It is among his papers as a member of the AEA that one gets the best sense of Dewey as a professional economist, an organizer and an administrator.

The collection contains some correspondence covering a brief period (1912 to 1914) in the early life of the American Statistical Association. However, no documentation of Dewey's long-standing position as editor of that group's journal, nor of his participation in many of its affairs is included.

A great deal of material, dated 1904 to 1908, concerning Dewey's consulting work on the 12th US Census is in the collection. He served as a member of its Census Advisory Committee. Most important are documents describing how research for the 12th Census was structured, especially in a report on Census research methods. Additional notes, galleys, and correspondence show Dewey's contributions to the Manufactures, Labor and Finance sections.

Records of Dewey's earliest consulting jobs (1894 to 1897) for the Massachusetts Children's Bureau and the Boston Public School Association also appear in the collection. The research produced for these agencies was instrumental in reforming the rehabilitative and educational policies regarding poor children used by the Office of the Overseers of the Poor in more than thirty Massachusetts towns. Records include correspondence with these offices, research notes, and drafts of reports.

Other consultancies represented in the collection included Dewey's work for the Office of the US Industrial Commission, the US National Monetary Commission, and the US Commission to the Paris Exposition of 1900. These records are sketchy, but they include correspondence, notes, and expense vouchers.

Dewey was a frequent writer and contributed to many scholarly yearbooks, encyclopedias, and other reference works. While few records in the collection pertain to his own publications, there is extensive documentation of his contributions to these larger works, in the form of correspondence with editors and publishers, research notes, research materials and outlines. Most prominent is his correspondence with the editor Albert Bushnell Hart, for whom Dewey wrote articles on economics, political economy, and history.

Additionally, much documentation is included in the collection concerning Discussions in Economics and Statistics, by Francis Amasa Walker, which Dewey edited for publication. There is no correspondence with Walker in the collection, though a few letters from his widow are included.